A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Semab Tariq shows off a tool for Postgres:
PgBouncer is a lightweight yet powerful connection pooling tool for PostgreSQL. It efficiently manages and reuses database connections, reducing the load on the server and improving performance. It acts as an intermediary between applications and the PostgreSQL database, optimizing connection usage and enhancing scalability.
This is a bit different from SQL Server, where connection pooling is built in. Read on to see how it works.
Comments closedStephanie Bruno has an update for us:
The Power BI Field Finder is a standalone .pbix file you can download and hook up to your reports and data model to. The Field Finder helps you visually analyze where fields are used in reports.
I’ve used this to great effect on a prior project where I had to figure out what was going on in a report with about 20-25 pages that other people had put together.
Comments closedErin Stellato has an update for us:
We’re rolling towards conference season and the Azure Data Studio engineers have been working hard on two things:
- adding new functionality
- improving stability and performance within the application
Read on to see what they’ve pushed out with Azure Data Studio 1.46.
Comments closedChad Callihan knows your last backup is only as good as your last restore:
Is the process of testing your backups something you know you should do but never get around to? Do you find yourself assuming all is well with backups while putting out other fires? Test-DbaLastBackup, part of the beloved dbatools, can solve your dilemma.
There are many options available when using Test-DbaLastBackup. Let’s explore a few of these options and see some examples of how to use them.
Click through to learn more about this. And you could easily put together Powershell scripts to stagger your restorations over a time frame (such as, 15% of your databases each day, so that you get to 100% by the end of the week).
Comments closedBrian Kelley tries out a product:
My organization typically moves production data to other environments. There are a variety of use cases:
- Testing with the amount and frequency of production data.
- Performing analytics on said data.
- Delivering production-like data to a third party for their use.
We do not want to move production data around. Instead, we want to deliver “production-like” data for these use cases. Sometimes, we work with multiple systems integrated with each other, and in those cases, we need the data to match up. In other instances, we need the sensitive data, such as personal identifiable information (PII), to be altered so it’s no longer sensitive, but there’s no requirement for it to be consistent across systems.
Read on for Brian’s full review. I should also note that this is most definitely a paid product.
Comments closedWhile my relationship with Extended Events is complicated for many reasons:
- Awful documentation
- Hardly any guidance on usage
- Almost nothing useful about what type of target to use when
- Everything stored in XML
- Slow, unfriendly GUI in SSMS
My need to use them while consulting outweighs my gripes and grievances about how Microsoft has chosen to write about, use, and present the data to you.
That’s where my stored procedure sp_HumanEvents comes in handy.
In fairness, Erik put his virtual money where his virtual mouth is, and sp_HumanEvents is put together quite well.
Comments closedChris Webb shares some thoughts:
Rather than blog about the tool itself – there’s no point repeating Nikola’s post – I thought it would be good to answer a question someone asked me later that day about Tabular Editor and which I’m definitely going to be asked about DAX Optimizer, namely:
This looks great, but it’s expensive and it’s hard for me to get sign-off to use third-party tools like this. Why doesn’t Microsoft give me something like this for free?
Chris shares his personal opinions on the matter. My opinion on it, as someone who has worked with Microsoft products for a long time and never for Microsoft, is that Microsoft needs to play a balancing act. They build products and tools with the intention of third parties extending them, whether by opening up APIs or creating an explicit extensions marketplace (like we see in Azure Data Studio and Visual Studio Code). If they go and take the best bits of these third party products, then that third party marketplace dries up quickly. On the other side of the coin, depending on third parties can’t always cut it. For example, Azure Data Studio used to have an awful execution plan viewer and the answer was “use SentryOne Plan Explorer instead.” That wasn’t a great solution either for Azure Data Studio (and today, I don’t know if the extension is even still around), so the pushback was firm: a good execution plan reader needs to be a core part of any first-class SQL Server developer tool from Microsoft.
Chris has plenty to say on the topic as well.
Comments closedPeter Schott prefers dark mode:
For those of us who’ve worked with SQL Server for some time, we’ve regularly used SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). In recent years, we’ve seen an increase in websites and applications offering a Dark Mode. Azure Data Studio has one built in as it’s based on the VS Code engine. SSMS is a form of the full Visual Studio IDE and offers some ability to skin, but attempts in the past to make a true dark mode have been only partially successful. Microsoft has not given us that option in SSMS as it’s been more work than they can commit to with a broad platform. So our options have been partial dark modes, which leave big portions of the interface a bright white, or just use the defaults with everything being light.
Click through to see how SQL Shades does in Peter’s estimation. As for me, I’ll stick with my light mode.
Comments closedSalman Ahmed automates query execution:
In PostgreSQL, there are several ways to execute queries, and one of them is by executing queries from SQL files. This approach allows users to manage and store their SQL queries separately and make debugging and development simpler. Using SQL files also helps in replication of database schemas. This blog discusses how to execute queries from SQL files in PostgreSQL.
Read on to see how you can use the psql command line tool to do just that.
Comments closedErik Darling talks up a famous Canadian:
I know there’s been a lot of blog content about the creation of and updates to my stored procedures lately. I try to consolidate as much as possible, but this one comes from Valued Contributor©.
The one, the only, the Canadian: Michael J Swart (b|t) recently contributed a really cool piece of code that I’ve been dying to have since I created sp_HumanEventsBlockViewer: the entire blocking chain is visualized in the results.
Click through to see what it looks like, and next time you see Michael, give him a thumbs up.
Comments closed